Ibrahim Mālik
The Culture of Peace and Co-Existence – Translated by Jamal Assadi, with Assistance from Michael Hegeman and Michael Jacobs
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: Short Fiction
- The Bird in the Iron Cage
- The Mad Man
- Ahmad Tries to Discipline Memory
- Taitabah
- The Scorpion
- I am coming, Aminah!
- Sa’ed and Mas’ud
- Yara: The Smart Girl
- The Tragedy
- The Two Brothers
- The Land of Gold
- What a Friend Wrote to Me
- Jashi’oun
- Will They Start Talking?
- What an American Poet Sang
- The Oxlip
- Part of What My Granddaughter, Lina, Whispered to Me
- The Orange
- Hassan Al-Mamroush Did Not Take His Dinner That Evening
- The Subject and the Predicate
- Part Two: Poetry
- The Song of the Pleasant Bird
- The Loquat
- I Am Astonished
- Oh, Young Sparrow!
- I Wonder
- Patience Is Fine
- Patience Is Most Fitting
- Oh, Winged and Sculpted One!
- Oh, Dove!
- Oh, Bird!
- Soaring Birds
- I Am Puzzled
- My Bird
- Oh, Bird’s Cage!
- Your Love’s Song, oh Fatimah
- Fatimah and the Rooster
- Sunflower
- The Wonderful Woman
- Oh, Woman, Who My Psyche Glorifies!
- My Yesterday That Was
- On the Tunes of the Dew’s Dropping
- My Lover’s Face
- I Love the Moon’s Appearance
- Pardon Me, Fatimah!
- The Most Beautiful Thing in You
- The Cactus Flower
- My Granddaughter
- Oh, Palm Tree
- Dear God! Oh, Hawthorn Tree!
- Dear God, How Much the Splendor of Your Flowers Allures Me!
- My Veteran Teacher
- Oh, Nature!
- Oh, Earth!
- Oh, Soil
- Verily I Am the River!
- How Wonderful!
- How Wonderful You Are, Oh, Night!
- Oh, Planet Venus!
- Oh, Sea!
- The Mirror of Existence
- Oh, You the Wind
- Rain and Wind I Am
- Oh, You Cloud!
- What Feeling!
- My Age
- Time’s Harshness
- The River Told Me!
- I Am Travelling
- A Life’s Will
- Whenever
- Wisdom
- Tougher than Sadness
- Oh, My Pain!
- Oh, My Homeland!
- What My Mother Said
- The Face of My Mother, Aminah
- Samach
- Please Know
- Oh, My Galilee
- They Stole Childhood from Me
- Oh, Fatimah!
- Oh, Poetry
- Oh, Mind!
- My Youngest Child Called Me
- The Black Butterfly
- Nikos Kazantzakis
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For permission to use copyright material, I would like to thank my friend, Ibrahim Mālik.
My thanks goes for the artist Ibrahim Hejazi for permission to use his painting, Refugees, on the cover of the book.
I would like to express my thanks and gratitude for my close friend, the novelist Dr. Martha Moody, her two children: Simon and Michael Jacobs, and my friend, Dr. Michael Hegeman for their notes, comments, questions and suggestions.
I feel grateful to Mr. Raef Dabbah, my history teacher at elementary school for mediating between Ibrahim Mālik and me.
And I would like to thank my family: children and parents and wife, Dalia, for their patience, support and encouragement.
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1
This book, the second on Ibrahim Mālik, 73, is the seventh in my task to present Palestinian authors to widespread audiences in the English language. My intention is to allow these authors to convey their creative works involving their own stories and experiences as well as their people’s in a novel amplified voice. These experiences and stories disclose not only their plight and marginalization but also their hopes and dreams.
The readers of this volume will find within its folds the chance to read a selection of Mālik’s short stories (20 stories) and his poetry (68 poems) that I translated and edited with assistance from my close friend, the novelist Dr. Martha Moody and her two children: Simon and Michael Jacobs; and from my friend, Dr. Michael Hegeman. No endeavor was made to pick out Mālik’s most renowned works. My objective rather was to bring together an illustrative compendium of his works.
Mālik’s stories and poetry propose a genuine portrait of the numerous predicaments, concerns, apprehensions and coercions that the Arab community inside Israel suffer from. To a great extent, these difficulties ← 1 | 2 → are currently the portions of many ethnic groups and communities in the Middle East and many parts all over the world. Mālik’s works often offer multifaceted and incongruous interactions between the old and the young, the parents and children, lovers and darlings, political leaders and people, thinkers and students, the tangible and the fictional, thoughts and sentiments, the normal and the irrational, peace and enmity, affection and abhorrence, and optimism and desperateness. Yet, these contradictory forces cooperate to fight for dignity, freedom and justice. Mālik’s goal is to encourage and promote the culture of peace, love, co-existence, forgiveness and cooperation. Hatred, war and violence do not pay.
Occasional readers of this work will take pleasure in exploring a different culture, while specialists interested in Arabic literature will find out new and bountiful grounds for academic study.
A poet and writer, Mālik was born in Samach, a village supervising the southern shoreline of Tiberias Lake on May 26, 1942. After his village was demolished in 1948 when Israel was established, he lived in Haifa then was made to leave two native places and proceed towards Kufr Yassif, a few miles east of Acre. There, he grew up and founded his social, political and intellectual careers. He completed his academic studies in Berlin and worked for many years in journalism. Mālik wrote many volumes of poetry and prose works. He is currently pensioned off and lives in Kufr Yassif with his wife.
2
Reading his prose, one is assured that Mālik has a significant message for writers, philosophers, politicians, leaders and others who help shape people’s lives and therefore have a profound impact on general public. This small-bodied man, committed to his wheelchair and who can barely move his parts, inveighs against all writers who make ideas of violence, terror, coercion, despondency, disbelief and alienation from society outweigh notions of hopefulness, peace, coexistence, prosperity and success. His message is simple: Stop being preachers of hopelessness, hatred and distrust. ← 2 | 3 →
Details
- Pages
- X, 132
- Year
- 2015
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781453916445
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781454189213
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781454189206
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433131417
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-1-4539-1644-5
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2015 (July)
- Keywords
- Short stories arab minority middle east
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2015. X, 132 pp.
